14 August 2013

Colour mixing

The two things I most enjoyed in the recent painting course were colour mixing and using the palette knife instead of paintbrush. This latest project combines these.

It started with badly-scuffed shoes, my most comfortable pair, and the thought that a bit of paint might cover the areas where the surface of the leather was gone - so I mixed up a taupe colour and restored the shoes. To use up the leftover paint (very little was needed on the shoes), I added in different colours and painted a little picture on the page with "shoe" in a battered old dictionary, which I'd bought in order to have a supply of thin, strong paper -

Then came the idea to mix up a different colour for each page - or perhaps not each page of the book, it's some 1400 pages - but for as long as the project held interest.

The colours on hand were a warm red and white left over from a previous project (leftovers like this are, despite my best efforts to do otherwise, still what gets me going on serendipitous paths), Naples Yellow, Red Oxide, Light Emerald, Payne's Grey, Light Blue Violet, Hooker's Green -

By adding one or two colours to what was left on the palette after each page was covered, the colours segued from orange to purple to various murky blues and greens -

showghe-shtetl to spoliate-spore

"Rules" quickly evolved - mix enough paint to cover the page and have some left over; cover all the text, but leave the headwords (could they be used as colour names?); paint to the bottom of the page. Write in the margin what the additional colour(s) are.

Repeating the process with different colours the next day, here is the range -

scenophylax-schiz- to short shoulder

One thing to work on is evenness of coverage. Some of the words are so glorious, I hate to cover them up -
Ripuarian, saliferous, procinct, novaculite, noursle ...

For today, the colours are white, Payne's Grey, Naples Yellow, Cobalt Blue, Magenta. I have no idea what will happen; tomorrow will bring different colours again.

Tuesday is Drawing Day - why not join in, wherever you are? Find somewhere that has interesting things - it needn't be a museum, it could be your own home! - and just draw, using whatever media you want. Ask some friends to join you, then have a nice lunch.

The London group has grown to the point where it's getting difficult to find a cafe table large enough, and reluctantly I must say that it is no longer open to new members.

8 August - Docklands, either the architecture or the covered garden or the museum. Meet in the museum cafe for lunch.